Paper short abstract:

Examining the collage as an interdisciplinary, international, and intermedia tool in the wake of COVID-19, this collaborative and experimental paper analyses the collagic process in the context of pandemic-related trauma, as well as artistic and anthropological practice.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is the result of an experiment undertaken by Cody Bock (University of Oxford) and Laura Bergin (University of Oxford) to examine the collage as an interdisciplinary, international, and intermedia tool in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic (Davis and Butler-Kisber 1999; Butler-Kisber and Poldma 2010; Holbrook and Pourchier, 2014; Butler-Kisber 2017; Vacchelli, 2018). Additionally, this project investigates the viability of collagic-elicitation as a means of exploring the deeply personal, therapeutic and empowering processes of making, discussing, and analysing collage.

Bock, a social scientist, and Bergin, an anthropologist, devised two prompts each, inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, grief, memory, and art (Chilton and Scotti, 2014). They then individually created a collage inspired by each of the four prompts: Bock practicing manual collage, and Bergin digital collage.

At the conclusion of the making process, Bock, located in the United States, and Bergin, living in the United Kingdom, utilised digital technologies to collaborate, contemplate and analyse differences in content, interpretation, media, methodology, and style of the eight collages (Stevens, 2012; Walton, 2016; Laine, 2018).

The project employs collage as a tool to bridge worlds geographically, academically, and experientially disparate (Clifford, 1988; Foster 1995; Vaughan, 2005). The making process is analysed as a profoundly personal and therapeutic exercise for jointly unpacking pandemic-related trauma, while the elicitation evoked through discussion seeks to further illuminate the significance of the medium within artistic and anthropological practice (Yuen 2016).

Paper short abstract:

In the paper, I explore the possibilities and potential problems of using collage-making as a collaborative method of collecting fieldwork data with research participants in sensitive environments, specifically in the context of women's experiences of obstetric violence.

Paper long abstract:

The sensitivity of the topic of motherhood and institutionalized childbirth prompts me as a researcher to look beyond normative ethnographic research. Collage making with its epistemological underpinnings suggests its potential as a method for liberatory research in and through the arts (Katheeeln Vaugh 2005, 5). Could collage-making bring insight into the emotions of an individual participant? Could it collaboratively and with a sensitivity and perceived safety of existing visual material capture women's emotionality and the sensorial aspects of traumatic experiences? How does the cultural system of institutionalized birth influence women's birthing experiences and what repercussions it has for their spiritual, emotional, and physical lives? There is an underlying need to stand with the women, trust them and gain their own trust as a researcher. Their stories of childbirth trauma, neglect, and disrespect have been undermined for decades as systemically no changes or political debates have been held. It shows the imperative use of different modes of engagement. The multimodal inter-disciplinary and reflexive approach that provides the framework for the collection and analysis of visual, aural, embodied, and spatial aspects of interaction and environments should be an imperative way of research in this particular case. A combination of various modes of knowledge i.e. photography, video and audio recordings, visual and other objects, field diaries, ethnographic writing, etc. – thus provides multiple avenues to arrive at multiple “truths”, respecting different participants’ perspectives (Pink 2005).

Paper short abstract:

What would a future where the physical and virtual realms collapse into each other look like? This paper proposes to look at image hybridization as a way of speculating on the long-term changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in our perception and sensorial experience of space.

Paper long abstract:

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns, matters of geography have become increasingly relevant. New viral borders, the reterritorialization of the majority of work and leisure activities into the virtual realm, the constant onslaught of images, numbers, and maps -all these elements continue to reshape how we move through and think about space. But what will the long-term effects of this crisis be on how we view the world and our place in it?

Combining Doreen Massey's work on the plurality of space with Derrida's hauntological approach and Lev Manovich's concept of augmented space, this paper looks at how film and image hybridization can be used to portray possible futures as glimpsed from this particular point in time - futures of digital sensibilities in which the past-present, official and unofficial, near and far hierarchies are overturned in a cyber-reality ruled by algorithms of desire, interest, and commercial appeal.

Using two of my most recent projects on the topic of the pandemic as examples, I wish to explore the idea that the overlapping/merging of archival images, observational footage and filmed performative actions can not only allow us to record events in ways which speak of the simultaneity, ongoingness and confusion of the present as we experience it, but also speculate on how these events will alter our perception of reality in the future.